Tank Balance

[Hruodig]

Eh. I've thought for a long time now that the development team has no clue what they want to do with tanks. From the vit/str change in midas, to back to str now, to questionable design decisions regarding magic vs physical damage in alexander, to complete re-hashes now? I stopped expecting anything.

[Kalocin]

Are things "HW paladin" bad with dark? No, Dark is very capable of making it through current content. Is there an area that Dark Knight is excelling so that there is a strategic reason for bringing a dark knight? Most people think the answer to this is no. That is the issue many have, its a repeat of HW paladin, not as dramatic, but still existing. We thought this lesson was learned pre stormblood when tank balance issues were going to be the fore front of importance, at which point the devs repeated their HW mistakes.

Stormblood Dark Knight has been trying to get the cost on dark passenger reduced to a reasonable level for 6 months so its potency matches the mana cost, this has been met with absolute silence. Why?

Why does it seem like only one class is being heard in these discussions even for the most reasonable of changes? I saw in another thread that Yoshi P doesn't understand why more people are playing warrior than dark knight. My question is, when you show so much care to one class but not the other why wouldn't people pick it?

This has largely been a lot of my own personal frustration but also something I've noticed regarding the player base, even from players. Warriors are incredibly popular so they get focus, whether good or bad, and so the development team will make changes. As a result we seem to have weird popularity contests, especially when applied with forum aggression to see any form of understanding, let alone the changes. We can even remember earlier at the start of Stormblood with the healer issues to see that vocal outrage precedes discourse for proper balance (not to say that it wasn't valid, simply it took precedent over all other discussions). When you acknowledge the many tank forum threads largely ignored by the development team you really have to ask: Why?

[Lozza]

I'm confused about why SE is making the changes they do with tanks. They say they want to simplify the job and also reduced skill bloat but PLD still has a tonne of skills, sure you don't use all of them all the time but unlike warrior and dark knight there are no skills there that HAVE to be used in one stance or under a certain buff.

Warrior gets their stance specific skills auto swapping on their bar with stance changes, but dark knight doesn't. Warrior has just had even more skills squashed together. There seem to be some fairly quick QoL fixes they could make for dark knight but they just don't. It's hard to know whether SE expects tanks to be in tank stance to tank or if they are happy to have healers pushed to the max, healing tanks in dps stance or if they want stance dancing - remember they removed it for healers - they say they want to lift the skill floor but dark knight still seems tough to play verses the ease of PLD and WAR. Yet it's WAR that's getting sweeping changes.

[hynaku]

Drk is a mess this reason why never done one job quest to it past lvl 60 one and not leveled it any past 60.

[MiniPrinny]

Drk is a mess this reason why never done one job quest to it past lvl 60 one and not leveled it any past 60.

If there's anything good about DRK this expansion, the story is it. The Job oozes just the right level of edginess and seriousness to make the WoL look like the "one person army" we are, and the DRK story itself just... it's [redacted] perfect. You owe it to yourself if you liked the level 50 quest to do the new quests.

[Kalocin]

If there's anything good about DRK this expansion, the story is it. The Job oozes just the right level of edginess and seriousness to make the WoL look like the "one person army" we are, and the DRK story itself just... it's [redacted] perfect. You owe it to yourself if you liked the level 50 quest to do the new quests.

Fray would have words with the dev team.

[RiyahArp]

In that case, they should never touch the jobs again. Everything can clear. .

analogy incoming

Let's imagine we are all playing a side scroller, and there are four characters. They each have some differences, mostly tailored for different types of players. Like one is slightly slower but takes less damage, one is faster and takes more, one is taller, etc.

Now while they are different, you can beat the game with any of them if you try. If you work a bit at it, you can even beat the optional harder new game + after you beat the game once. People may like or prefer one over the other, but none are really too weak or too strong.

Now imagine people get bored with the game after beating it, and decide to speedrun it as fast as possible. Those little subtle differences suddenly matter a lot more to them. The faster character is better for them because speed is better than extra health, since you aren't going to get hit much anyways. The taller character can take shortcuts, which didn't matter as much when you played the game, but shave precious seconds off your time when speed running. The fourth character doesn't have any real utility for speed runs at all; he's all around average. Suddenly, you have a meta for speed running, since the only thing that matters is one aspect of the game; how fast you can beat it.

Would you think its ok for the dev to constantly listen to those speed runners and try to near perfectly balance every one of them for speed running? Even though the closer you get to it, the more impossible it is because the difference can be in a single second or less?

This is kind of like how people in FFXIV view some job changes. If you make a self-goal that really isn't designed explicitly in the game, and its above and beyond tuning the jobs to clear all the explicit content. you can't really call jobs that meet or fail this goal as unviable. The goal is far tighter and narrower than teh devs designed the game for, and balancing for that may be hard or impossible without destroying the ability of the jobs to be individual. You get to a point where you're tuning too tightly because the goal is too tight; in this case its a very strong parity that something like a nerf of 20-30 potency becomes a huge issue. The meta shifts from clearing the game on hard to something much harder to balance for.

I think there's only so much devs can do. Like people complain about red mages utility and damage, but the plus is red mage is a lot simpler job for players to play while still being potent enough to clear content. If you try to balance them around an ideal meta, you risk destroying this.

[Chrono_Rising]

analogy incoming

Let's imagine we are all playing a side scroller, and there are four characters. They each have some differences, mostly tailored for different types of players. Like one is slightly slower but takes less damage, one is faster and takes more, one is taller, etc.

Now while they are different, you can beat the game with any of them if you try. If you work a bit at it, you can even beat the optional harder new game + after you beat the game once. People may like or prefer one over the other, but none are really too weak or too strong.

Now imagine people get bored with the game after beating it, and decide to speedrun it as fast as possible. Those little subtle differences suddenly matter a lot more to them. The faster character is better for them because speed is better than extra health, since you aren't going to get hit much anyways. The taller character can take shortcuts, which didn't matter as much when you played the game, but shave precious seconds off your time when speed running. The fourth character doesn't have any real utility for speed runs at all; he's all around average. Suddenly, you have a meta for speed running, since the only thing that matters is one aspect of the game; how fast you can beat it.

Would you think its ok for the dev to constantly listen to those speed runners and try to near perfectly balance every one of them for speed running? Even though the closer you get to it, the more impossible it is because the difference can be in a single second or less?

This is kind of like how people in FFXIV view some job changes. If you make a self-goal that really isn't designed explicitly in the game, and its above and beyond tuning the jobs to clear all the explicit content. you can't really call jobs that meet or fail this goal as unviable. The goal is far tighter and narrower than teh devs designed the game for, and balancing for that may be hard or impossible without destroying the ability of the jobs to be individual. You get to a point where you're tuning too tightly because the goal is too tight; in this case its a very strong parity that something like a nerf of 20-30 potency becomes a huge issue. The meta shifts from clearing the game on hard to something much harder to balance for.

I think there's only so much devs can do. Like people complain about red mages utility and damage, but the plus is red mage is a lot simpler job for players to play while still being potent enough to clear content. If you try to balance them around an ideal meta, you risk destroying this.

I think you misunderstand what people are asking for. At this point Dark Knights aren't complaining about meta. They are asking to have one of the unique abilities in your analogy. If we wanted speed running then yes, Dark Knight needs damage and thats it. People are asking for more mitigation, QoL, playstyle variations, or selfsustain, these things aren't really meta issues. The tank subforum is currently concerned with the incoming patch, but if you read closely enough many people are asking for dark knight to have more of an independent identity compared to warrior and paladin.

The sad fact is not every class can be meta, that is something that needs to be recognized of course. But we also need to recognize that Balance doesn't mean everyone is meta, its more like everyone brings unique attributes to a group, and that should be a developer priority.

[Nedkel]

I am just sitting here waiting for blood weapon to be usable in grit stance, that would be all i need on drk.

[Derio]

DRK has the least number of skills out of all the tanks and yet also has the lowest mitigation toolset.

Without TBN we are looking at major flaws in the job.

All content lvl69 and below are a DRK's worst nightmare due to 4.0 being completely balanced around the job being at lvl70.

You know the job is in a rough state when the Japanese forum is 100+ pages of DRK feedback in 1 thread and they dont even listen to them or their concerns for the job.